December 2000

New ESIG/UNEP report: Time to get ready for next El Niño

Mickey Glantz.

Now is the time for vulnerable countries around the globe to begin
preparing for the next El Niño, according to a United Nations
report being issued early next year. The report was prepared by a team
led by principal investigator Mickey Glantz (Environmental and Societal
Impacts Group) and funded by the UN Foundation.

A 19-month study of 16 countries examined what worked and what didn't in
national responses to the forecasts and impacts of the 199798 El
Niño. Droughts, floods, fires, and frost related to that
eventdubbed the "El Niño of the Century"took hundreds
of lives and left behind at least $32 billion in damage, including
destruction of infrastructure, depletion of food and water reserves,
displacement of communities, and outbreaks of disease.

"The 199798 event was a wake-up call," says Mickey. "Awareness of
what El Niño can do to societies and economies is now high."
According to Mickey, the periods between El Niño events (such as
the neutral phase we're now in) are the best times to improve
understanding of the phenomenon and devise ways to better cope with its
potential direct and indirect effects.

A revised and updated edition of Mickey Glantz's popular book
Currents of Change: Impacts of El Niño and La Niña on
Climate and Society (Cambridge University Press) has just been
released. It examines the major El Niño of 199798 and
suggests how societies can manage climate-related activities and
disaster preparation. The SCDNational Centers for Environmental
Prediction archive of sea-surface temperature data was used to create
animations of the development of the 199798 El Niño and the
19982000 La Niña, which readers can view by flipping pages
in the book.

At the moment, says Mickey, there is "a general lack of belief among
potential forecast users around the world in the reliability of the
forecast." Uncertainties exist about the science of El Niño and
how to use probabilistic forecasts of events and impacts.

Scientists and the media tend to refer to El Niño's environmental
impacts as if they affect an entire country, notes the report. Yet,
because of typically diverse topographical features, seldom is a whole
country affected by the same El Niñorelated anomaly. For
example, northern Peru and southeastern Brazil typically experience
heavy rains and floods during El Niño. Southern Peru and
northeast Brazil usually suffer from drought. Such in-country
differences need to be better understood and articulated in order to
maximize the usefulness of forecasts to governments, industries, the
public, and the media, the study says.

Each event has its own surprises. During El Niño the Pacific
coast of Costa Rica commonly suffers from drought, whereas its Atlantic
coast remains wet. In 1997, thousands of cattle were moved away from the
Pacific coast to the north-central region to escape a predicted drought,
only to perish because of an unexpected drought in the resettlement
area.

Many nations, many lessons

In spring 1999 the UN Environment Programme received a $650,000 grant
from the UN Foundation to organize the El Niño study, requested
by the UN General Assembly. UNEP and NCAR took the lead, working closely
with three UN partnersthe World Meteorological Organization (WMO),
the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, and UN University. A
study team was established for each of the countries to assess its
response to the 199798 El Niño forecast. Participating
nations are Bangladesh, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia,
Fiji, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay,
Peru, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

The complete 16-country study, to be published early in 2001, addresses
the challenges faced by these nations and recommends specific actions to
help reduce devastation from the next El Niño. A preliminary
report issued in October called for the following actions, among many
others:

Involve heads of states early in climatic disaster policy and
action

Create regional organizations focused strictly on El Niño
impacts

Designate funding to map the world's most vulnerable populations

Improve forecasting of the impacts and onset of El Niño

Inform local educators and decision makers on how to best use El
Niño forecasts

Develop a scientific establishment within each country to use
research results from other countries

Deploy a network of fixed ocean buoys in the Indian Ocean to collect
meteorological information (a similar network already exists in the
Pacific)

"El Niño forecasting in itself has no intrinsic value. What
value it has is [in] how people react to it," says WMO secretary-general
Godwin Obasi. "A relatively small investment must be made to improve
world forecasting capabilities so that government decisions are based on
authoritative information and the grief and economic losses caused by El
Niño can be mitigated."

 Anatta

On the Web:

Reducing the Impact
of Environmental Emergencies Through Early Warning and
PreparednessThe Case of El Niņo-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)